Category: spirituality

Hillary Clinton is not my abuela by Pauline Park “7 things Hillary Clinton has in common with your abuela” has provoked overwhelmingly negative reactions from Latinos and Latinos. Within hours of the posting of the absurd piece of #Hispandering on HillaryClinton.com on Dec. 21, outraged Latinas took to Twitter to denounce Hillary with the hashtags #NotMyAbuela […]

Korea 2015: return to the motherlandby Pauline Park In June 2015, I returned to Korea for the first time since I left at the age of seven and-a-half months old; it was a momentous trip. These are some photos from the month I spent in the Land of the Morning Calm. Monday, June 15 I […]

Jackson Heights: Beyond ‘Diversity’ by Pauline Park Jackson Heights is the most diverse neighborhood in Queens, the most diverse county in the United States. But what precisely does ‘diversity’ really mean and how does it actually play out in this neighborhood that I’ve called home for nearly two decades now? In this photo essay, I hope […]

10 books that helped shape my life I’ve had two different friends ask me to post to Facebook a list of 10 books that have ‘stayed with me over the years.’ So for those friends, here’s my list: 1) The King James Bible 2) Dream Power (Ann Faraday) 3) Walden (Henry David Thoreau) 4) The […]

The unprecedented assault on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military this week brought to mind a hymn whose text was written by Johann Heermann in 1636, “Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen” (Zion mourns with anxiety and pain); all one needs to do is substitute ‘Gaza’ for ‘Zion’ and the hymn could be sung […]

“‘Gauguin: Metamorphoses,’ which opens on Friday at MoMA in New York, recasts the artist as an altogether darker figure, closer to Edvard Munch and the dark pre-Freudians of Northern Europe than the post-impressionist confraternity of Van Gogh, Seurat and Cézanne,” Jason Farago wrote in his review (“Gauguin: Metamorphoses review – ‘Forceful, disturbing, obscene’,” Guardian, 6 […]

ISSUES OF TRANSGENDERED ASIAN AMERICANS AND PACIFIC ISLANDERS By Pauline Park, co-founder, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and John Manzon-Santos, Executive Director, Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center Testimony submitted to the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Transgendered and gender-variant people are among the most invisible and marginalized of […]

Israel, Hobby Lobby, transgender & the Family Research Council I was fascinated to see the most recent ‘prayer targets’ message from the Family Research Council. FRC “bills itself as ‘the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,’ but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false […]

Völuspá Given the geologically active terrain of Iceland, it’s probably no surprise that the Vikings who settled there would produce such vivid creation myths and other legends. Who could forget the eruption of Eyafjallajökull in 2010? “Völuspá” is the first and most celebrated of all the poems in what has come to be known as […]

Transgender Identities & Spiritual Traditions in Asia & the Pacific: Lessons for LGBT/Queer APIs by Pauline Park presentation at the Pacific School of Religion Chapel Berkeley 2 April 2013 I’d like to begin by thanking Jess Delegencia of the API Roundtable for inviting me to speak here at the Pacific School of Religion; I am […]

Transfeminism Speaking My Truth to Power by Pauline Park Is there a ‘trans feminism’? And if so, what is it? Given that feminism itself is such a charged subject and transgender identity is a contested domain, that question is a productive one even if one not easy to answer. It was in graduate school (1988-94) […]

Klee’s “Insula Dulcamara” (1938) Paul Klee on intuition in art According to Paul Klee, the technique of the brush stroke is a great deal, but the crucial factor in painting is intuition. “We construct and construct,” Klee wrote in a Bauhaus prospectus, “and yet intuition is still a good thing. A considerable amount can be […]